


Sequester

by Melyanna (darthmelyanna)



Series: west-gate: A West Wing/Stargate Crossover [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 12:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17601449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthmelyanna/pseuds/Melyanna
Summary: Despite all precautionary measures, accidents happen.





	Sequester

Marcus Lorne remembered the incident a few years earlier, when Elizabeth Weir had fainted, just collapsed like a rag doll in her office when an infestation of nanites had gotten a foothold in her body. He, like most everyone in Atlantis, had come in and out of the infirmary that day, and he remembered what John Sheppard had been like in the next five hours, until his patience finally broke and he charged through the quarantine barrier to save her.

Marcus had never thought he might be able to really understand what that felt like, but he did now. And he was hating every second of it.

When Beckett came out of the quarantine area they sealed it up again, and the doctor pulled his helmet off. He cast one glance at Marcus and said, “Come here, son.”

Marcus did as he was told. Ellie wasn’t watching him, and that made something sink in his stomach unpleasantly.

“She’ll be okay, Doc, right?” he asked when they had a little privacy near the on-duty doctor’s desk. “She’ll be okay.”

“I honestly don’t know, Colonel,” Beckett replied. “And we’re not going to know for about a week.”

The sick feeling in his stomach worsened, and he looked at Ellie inside the quarantine bubble. According to what he’d picked up so far, she’d been helping out with some routine lab work on a virus which a team of Marines had accidentally brought to a village on another planet. The simple cold had mutated into something deadly with alarming speed, and after the village had been wiped out, the Atlantis medical research team had gone in to figure out what had happened and why it had mutated so quickly.

Half an hour ago, Marcus had been summoned to the infirmary. Ellie had been stuck with an infected needle. They did pump her full of a retrovirus, but given how rapidly the virus had spread among the villagers – it had been maybe a month from beginning to end – they weren’t going to let her out for a while. Not until they were sure she was clear of the disease.

What no one was saying, but he knew already, was that they didn’t have a cure for it.

Beckett sighed. “Honestly, I spend half my life as a relationship counselor,” he said. “Go talk to her, son. If you think you’re scared, you should try imagining what she feels like now.”

Marcus shot him a dirty look. “That’s not very comforting.”

“That’s not why I’m a doctor.”

He walked away anyway, his arms crossed over his chest as he came up to the quarantine area. “Ellie?”

She lifted her head, but to his surprise, she looked remarkably calm. “Hello,” she said.

“Are you–” He stopped himself short. “I’m going to guess you’re tired of people asking if you’re feeling all right.”

Ellie smiled just a little. “Good guess.”

“Listen, I. . .” He looked away from her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Marcus,” she said, “these things happen. My mother once got stuck with an HIV-infected needle. She doesn’t have HIV now. Doctors make mistakes like this and we learn how to deal with them.”

His eyes went from her face to the IV in her arm and the monitor she was hooked up to. “I don’t think you’re the one that’s supposed to be giving comfort right now, Ellie.”

“I’ll be okay, Marcus,” she replied. “Really. I’ll be okay. I’ll miss whatever you’ve got planned for our anniversary Friday, but I’ll be okay.”

An hour later, when he’d gotten back to work, something about the look on her face was still bothering him. Somehow he suspected she was a lot more worried than she’d let on.

* * *

If Ellie was awake during his free time, Marcus stayed down in the infirmary for the next week, even slept there a few times. Frequently Laura and Kate were there, and Elizabeth was there a lot too. In fact, Marcus couldn’t remember seeing her in the infirmary this much unless her husband or one of her sons was there as a patient.

He and Laura were taking their teams off-world one afternoon, and they found themselves alone in the armory. Marcus was doing everything he could to focus, wondering all the while if he shouldn’t have asked Sheppard for some time off while Ellie was in quarantine. It was better this way, he told himself. Better if he kept himself occupied instead of sitting around and worrying.

“Hey,” Laura said, “you okay?”

“Not really.” He knew her too well to lie to her about something like this.

“Well,” she replied, “I think Colonel Sheppard put us on this mission together so we’d keep each other in line.”

He snorted. “I thought that was why he normally _doesn’t_ put us on missions together.”

“Extraordinary circumstances.” She shoved another thing of C4 in a pocket on her vest. “I’m pretty good at things when I put my mind to it.”

“Yeah, that’s what your boyfriend always tells me.”

Laura elbowed him hard for that, but she laughed too. It was good to hear that sound.

* * *

  
When he got back from his mission, Kate joined him in the infirmary. Ellie was sleeping, but Marcus had no intention of leaving until he’d spoken to her. Kate stayed with him and held his hand.

“She told me about her mother once,” Kate explained. “It really is more common than you’d think. Still scary, but common. I worked in a hospital for about a year when I got my degree, and I helped more than one doctor through this kind of thing.”

“Yeah, but how many of them were working with viruses that the only known statistics about them was the mortality rate?”

“I knew a doctor who stuck himself with a needle while doing aid work in Africa,” she replied. “Believe me, if anyone had cause to fear for his life, it was him.”

“I’ll be a lot happier in a couple days when this is all over,” he said. But he squeezed her hand, just grateful that she was there with him.

Ellie shifted in her bed and opened her eyes. “Hey,” Marcus said.

“Hey,” she replied, looking at them. “Cheating on me already?”

He made a face at her, but didn’t let go of Kate’s hand.

Ellie shook her head, laughing, and pushed herself up. Marcus thought she looked a little slow, but she’d just been sleeping. Then she got up from the bed, brought her fingers to her forehead, and collapsed like she’d been shot.

“Ellie!” he shouted, launching up from his chair before he remembered the sheet of plastic that separated them. Alarms started going off, technicians got into their hazmat gear, and Kate gently pulled him back.

For all the world, he wanted to rush into that tent and just hold on.

With all the activity going on around him, he felt incredibly helpless, like he couldn’t get enough room to breathe. But he couldn’t leave either. He just watched as they checked her pulse, put an oxygen mask over her face, took her temperature. It was probably under a minute, but felt like agonized hours before her eyes fluttered open again. Marcus squatted down as close to her as he could. “Ellie? Baby, can you hear me?”

She turned her head slightly and nodded.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told her. “I love you, Ellie.”

Slowly, and despite everything that was going on around her, she moved her hand, touching the wall of plastic. Marcus mimicked the move, and they stayed there with hands not quite touching until the technicians lifted her up to the bed again.

* * *

  
That afternoon, Dr. Weir stopped by. “Hey,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder as he sat, leaned forward as he watched her sleep. “I heard she fainted.”

Marcus nodded once. “The air filtration inside the quarantine tent went crazy, according to Beckett,” he explained. “Cut off her oxygen supply. She was suffocating and just passed out.”

“So it wasn’t the virus?”

“No, thank God.”

“Thank God,” Elizabeth repeated. There was a brief pause, and she added, “I really never wanted to see this tent up again.”

It had been a few years since the nanite incident, but Marcus had never heard her talk about it. “I’m not sure anyone would disagree with that, ma’am,” he replied.

“You know, as far as I know John hasn’t really talked about that since the day it happened.”

“Can’t say I blame him.”

“Sadly, I know how that goes,” she said. “I’ve been in hospitals or infirmaries and hoping for the best far too many times.”

Marcus just kept his eyes on Ellie as she rested peacefully. “Once is too many times.”

Elizabeth rubbed his back, as though agreeing with him.

* * *

On the seventh and final day of Ellie’s quarantine, he’d happened to walk by McKay’s lab at exactly the wrong moment, when the astrophysicist needed a guinea pig with the ATA gene. As a result, he wasn’t there when she was released from the infirmary, and only got away from McKay when Sheppard had radioed to tell him that Ellie was clear of any infection, wanting to know why he hadn’t been in the infirmary in the first place. Then he ordered McKay to let him go.

He found her in a lounge, talking and laughing with Kate and Laura. Ellie got up and hugged him fiercely, and he let himself cling to her even though they weren’t alone.

He allowed himself one swift kiss on her cheek before rejoining the others. The group didn’t stay together long, as Laura and Kate both conveniently remembered that they had other things they were supposed to do. Marcus had never begrudged their company, but he was glad to have some time alone with Ellie before everyone in Atlantis knew she was out of quarantine and wanted to welcome her back.

He tugged lightly on a wet curl. She’d evidently showered after getting out of the infirmary. “I’m. . . really glad you’re okay,” he said.

Ellie practically crawled on top of him, and as her hands cupped his face, he wrapped his arms around her tiny frame. They kissed again and again, and the nightmare of the last week slowly loosened its grip on his mind. Utter relief washed through him as he touched and tasted her, and the hunger in her kisses made him think she was making sure this wasn’t a dream.

Then he tasted salt, and after a moment’s confusion he realized she was crying.

“Ellie,” he said, pulling back.

Her whole body started to shake. “I thought I was going to die, Marcus,” she whispered, just before she started sobbing.

Marcus pulled her to him tightly, rubbing her back and trying to soothe her. She’d held herself together through the whole ordeal better than he had, but now that it was over she had to let it go. It was his turn to hold the world together for her.

He wondered about her mother, how she had reacted once it was all over and the HIV test had come back negative. He found himself hoping that she’d had someone there to hold her if she’d cried herself to sleep too.

They just stayed there until she was soundly asleep on top of him. Marcus shifted her awkwardly and got to his feet, intent on carrying her to her room. She needed the rest, but she woke when he was about halfway to her door. “Marcus?” she said blearily.

“I’m just taking you to bed,” he replied. “You get to be carried by your knight in shining armor. Don’t complain.”

She made a noise that sounded like “I’m not,” but Marcus wasn’t sure. She let him carry her, though, and when he gently laid her down on her bed she reached for his hand. “I’m sorry we missed the anniversary,” she said.

“I’m not,” he replied. “This is better.”

As Ellie drifted off again, her hand in his, Marcus found it hard to let go.


End file.
